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Hurricane Sandy started breaking up as it hit the New Jersey coast Monday evening, whipping ashore with sustained winds of 90 mph (145 kph), dumping record amounts of rain, causing massive flooding, and leaving more than two million people without power along a huge section of the Eastern USA. The National Hurricane Center re-designated the storm as a “post-tropical cyclone,” as it lost its tropical characteristics when it moved inland, but it was still packing hurricane-force winds. Forecasters said the storm would get worse with powerful winds extending 175 miles (282 kilometres) from its centre.
A visibly-angry New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said shortly before the storm hit, “We’re at the moment now where evacuations are no longer possible and we’re no longer able to come and rescue people”. He said despite his requests, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford told people to stay in shelters in the city and they would now have to ride out the storm on their own until Tuesday morning. Parts of Atlantic City were already under five feet of water. Christie said, “So, for those of you who are on the barrier islands who decided it was a better idea to wait this out than to evacuate, and for those elected officials who decided to ignore my admonition, this is now your responsibility”.
On Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg… who had ordered mandatory evacuations for 375,000 people… also said, “The time for relocation or evacuation is over”. Monday afternoon, a crane collapsed in high winds at a high-rise construction site in New York City, dangling precariously 75 feet (23 meters) in the air, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents and hotel guests. As the high-speed winds began to pummel the city, Bloomberg closed high bridges and low tunnels, and pleaded with people to be cautious and use common sense, saying, “We’ve had to give a few people summonses today, for trying to surf, if you can believe that. We’d like to experience what we’ve experienced so far, and that’s no fatalities”.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said, “This is the most catastrophic event that we’ve faced and been able to plan for in any of our lifetimes”. Malloy ordered all of Connecticut’s state highways to close as a precaution. Up and down the east coast, officials scrambled throughout the day to prepare emergency crews and residents, hoping to minimise damage and loss of life by ordering mass evacuations, by shutting down roads, bridges, and transit systems, and closing schools and businesses. At a late-afternoon news conference, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said the biggest concern for him is the storm surge, “The question is going to be what level does the surge take us to… later on this evening when it’s actually high tide”.
Late Monday night, scientists expect a storm surge as high as 11 feet (3.4 meters) to hit the coast. Long Island meteorologist Brysen VanEck {known as “the cheesiest weatherman in the world” by all of us in the know, he’s on News 12: editor} told Newsday, “We might never see in our lifetime anything like this again”. Off the coast of North Carolina in the southern USA, rescue crews recovered the body of 42-year-old Claudene Christian, one of two crew members missing when their ship began taking on water and sank early Monday morning. The US Coast Guard was able to rescue 14 crewmembers several hours later, plucking them from the sea and off of life rafts. The search continues for one man still missing.
On Monday, the storm brought trading on Wall Street to a halt, and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ stock exchange will close on Tuesday as well, the first time in more than 100 years that weather stopped trading for more than 24 hours. The United Nations cancelled all meetings at its New York headquarters for the second consecutive day. Just eight days ahead of the US presidential election, Hurricane Sandy interrupted campaign plans for both sides, as well as early voting in Washington DC and several states. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney cancelled campaign events through Tuesday.
30 October 2012
RIA-Novosti
